CODEWITHSUNDEEP
mongodbamazon-web-servicesmeteoramazon-ec2database
Elegant.Scripting
Elegant.Scripting

Reputation: 837

Hosting the database separately for Meteor apps

It seems to be a common and safer practice to host the database separately from Meteor apps. That is to say, have an EC2 instance for your Meteor app, and an EC2 instance for your MongoDB, and make them talk to one another.

From what I understand, people do this because it's more secure, and it allows them to deploy newer versions of their app without touching the database.

I'd like to do this with Amazon EC2 alone, as opposed to using another 3rd party service, like Compose.io.

How can I host a Meteor app and its database separately on two EC2 instances, and have them communicate with one another?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 329

Answers (2)

BeeTee2
BeeTee2

Reputation: 777

It is common practice, and people mostly do it because it offers you the ability to scale them both independently.

As to the how, you'll want to obviously configure each of your Amazon EC2 instances, installing meteor on one, and MongoDB on the other. You'll also need to configure your VPC (Amazon Virtual Private Cloud) so that your MongoDB instance accepts incoming connections on whatever port you specify (default is 27017), so that your Meteor Application can connect.

After that it's just a matter of telling your meteor app where to go to get the database connection. The most secure way of doing this will be to set a couple Environment Variables, named MONGODBSERVER and MONGODBPORT, DBUSER, DBPASSWORD, etc.

You'll then want to set some variables in your server Meteor code, using something like:

Meteor.startup(function() {
  var DbUser = process.env.DBUSER;
  var DbPassword = process.env.DBPASSWORD;
  var MongoDBServer = process.env.MONGODBSERVER;
  var MongoDBPort = process.env.MONGODBPORT;
});

And if you're using the native MongoDB Driver, connecting becomes trivial:

var MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient;

MongoClient.connect('mongodb://DbUser:DbPassword@MongoDBServer:MongoDBPort/databasename', function(err, db) {
  ...
});

Then it's just a matter of constructing your Mongo models using something like:

Temperatures = new Mongo.Collection('temperatures');
Temperatures._ensureIndex({temp: 1, time: 1});

And then taking action on those models in regard to the database:

Temperatures.insert({temp: ftemp, time: Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000)});

I'll also mention that http://modulus.io is a really decent Meteor hosting solution. I'd recommend them, unless you are stuck on using Amazon EC2 instances, which is fine, but more complicated for a simple application.

Upvotes: 2

Stephen Richardson
Stephen Richardson

Reputation: 1

You need to set an Environment Variable for Mongo where it is hosted

MONGO_URL

mongodb://:@hostingproviderurl:port/xxx?autoReconnect=true&connectTimeoutMS=60000

the correct mongodb:// url string would be provided by the mongodb hosting provider.

Upvotes: 0

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